Shirazeh Houshiary: New Work
29 May – 26 July 2008

Lisson Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by Shirazeh
Houshiary. The exhibition will include previously unseen large scale canvases,
smaller paintings and sculpture. Also on display will be Houshiary’s first film-based
work shown on a LCD screen.

For this exhibition Houshiary has created seven new large-scale paintings.
Executed on either black or white monochromatic canvas the delicate markings
of her pencil are elusive and change in our vision over time. Each mark
represents a word, the meaning of which remains unknown. These meticulous
pencil traces create a second surface layer, contrasting with the solid aquacryl
background. This new layer hovers in front of our eyes, at the very edge of
perception, like a floating veil.

The exhibition will also include a new body of towers conceived in collaboration
with the architect Pip Horne. Undoing the Knot, 2008, is a six-and-a-half-metre
sculptural tower made of anodised blue aluminium. It will be exhibited on Lisson
Gallery’s new outdoor sculpture area. Two smaller towers, one pink, one
turquoise, measuring just under three metres, will stand inside the gallery.

Further works on display will include a new computer animated film entitled
Shroud, 2007, shown on a 53 inch LCD screen. The abstract theme of the film is
based on two of Houshiary’s paintings and places itself between form and
formlessness, presence and invisibility. Shroud, 2007 was conceived with the
assistance of Mark Hatchard at Hotbox Studios.

Shirazeh Houshiary was born in Shiraz, Iran and has lived and worked in London
since the mid-1970s. She studied at Chelsea School of Art and has been
awarded Professorship at the London Institute. She was nominated for the
Turner Prize in 1994. Her work can be found in major public collections
worldwide including MOMA, New York; Guggenheim, New York; The British
Council Collection, London, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Prato,
Italy. Houshiary’s work formed a key part of MOMA’s 2006 exhibition Without
Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking, curated by Fereshteh Daftari. Recent
projects include Bloom, 2006, a six-metre tower permanently installed in
Midtown Tokyo. Over the past year Houshiary has worked on a new East
window for St Martin-in-the-Fields, which will be unveiled in late April 2008. The
minimal design will add light to the famous church and is one of the most
significant pieces of religious art commissioned in London in recent years. Both
these projects were realised in collaboration with the architect Pip Horne.

On the occasion of this exhibition, Lisson Gallery is publishing a catalogue with
an essay by Mel Gooding.